Hrishikesh Srinivas


Throwaway

One thought process shed another prior, thinking
                                                                                                          Itself groomed for a greatness bestowed by age
                Horseshoe rattling down tied by its own shape
                                                                                           Aniara leaving one throw’s angle for yet another.
                               What was to be expected with the state of travel
                                                                            In its becoming, now the best of announced
                                              Sectors staying in and turning out          a pithy x
                                                                      Ever in the taught excuses one makes
                                                             Never in the involutary directions one takes.

Would it be easier if we play actors rushed the stage
                                                                                                          Stray looks aside, dialogue masking labyrinths
                Densely ingrained weaving in and out of being
                                                                                           Then the acquired changes further bowstrings
                               Apposite to the arrow of time than petty shoestrings
                                                                            Sacrificially tripping us up the rest of our lives.
                                              Somewhere in the howling beneath the supermoon
                                                        Ready to make a clean break for it, marks set
                                                             How could you miss the ringing hills, sitting ducks?
                                             Out to the side talismans remark on dumb luck
                                                                            Shepherding even the wildest of nature through
                                                       — This too to stay a little while,
                                                                                           Eat from the little bowl, sleep in the little bed
Leave drunken feather, paying up in inheritance.



Not to ___,
      but

Not to go out see the world,
      but cornered followed by hometown streets

Not to see oneself as from afar,
      but blindfolded in the close-quartered eye

Not to raise in boldness with,
      but kneel in prayer of to be taken

Not to care and be cared for,
      but administered and under siege

Not to be known,
      but be known to





Hrishikesh Srinivas hails from Sydney, Australia. He enjoys reading and writing poetry, with poems having appeared or forthcoming in UNSWeetened Literary Journal, Hemingway's Playpen, Otoliths and Mantis. He was awarded the Dorothea Mackellar National Poetry Award in 2011 and the Nillumbik Ekphrasis Poetry Youth Award in 2013, also being included in the 'Laughing Waters Road: Art, Landscape and Memory in Eltham' 2016 exhibition catalogue. He is currently a graduate student in electrical engineering at Stanford University, USA.
 
 
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